I thought I’d take a break from working on the back patio railing (see photo above of the drill press in action) to relate my experience with the infamous Canon Rebate program. First, if you’re having problems, see this article over at The Digital Picture.com. Many photo forums offer similar tales of problems with these twice yearly programs. But my experience has been, well, it could be much worse.
I bought the 30D with a promotional EF-S lens back in December, and under that rebate program the $115 combo rebate should’ve been doubled to $230. A few weeks later I bought a second lens which had a $50 rebate.
I consider rebates a personal challenge. I’ve read many times about how companies offer rebates as purchase incentives, knowing that many people are too lazy or too forgetful to follow through with the various paperwork involved with a successful rebate submission. I take it as a matter of pride that no one is going to lure me into a purchase with a rebate and not deliver on their promise of sending some money back. I keep a database on my computer of all rebates I’ve sent in, when I sent them and where, with scans of all documents, and when the check arrives I enter that, too, so I know I have ‘won.’
When embarking on these Canon rebates, though, I had heard from more than once source how long it can take and how much of a struggle it can be to get the money Canon owes you. After performing my regular recordkeeping, I put the rebates out of mind until recently, when the costs of the backyard project started making every penny count in the monthly budget. I wondered what had become of those Canon rebates.
I had only received one check for $15 since December. And it seemed that five months was a bit too long. As many companies do, Canon appears to outsource its rebate admin. So I braced myself for a fight and followed the advice from the article linked above and called Canon Customer Service rather than the rebate center.
I talked to Krista, who was polite and sympathetic as she looked up my records (Canon has a web-based pre-registration thing to get your info into their system before they receive the paperwork). She was able to tell that the $50 for the second lens had been sent to the wrong address. She then discovered that a key element of the camera rebate had not been included, namely the UPC bit I’d had to remove from the box. It was in the envelope, of course, but had somehow gone missing during the processing of the rebate.
She gave me a number for the rebate center, saying they had to take the next steps and to call her back if I had any problems. She even gave me her extension. She was great. I braced myself again, though, for my call to the rebate center.
I got Angela, there, who was just as helpful. She saw that one of her people had entered the wrong zip code on the lens rebate and sent it to Washington state, and then mentioned that since the zip code was wrong it hadn’t been included with the previous submissions. I asked if that meant its amount should be doubled to $100 and she said yes. I hadn’t expected that—I thought for the double up items had to be purchased at the same exact time. She took a moment to reissue that rebate and said it should arrive in the next week or so.
She then said I could fax my photocopy (scan) of the UPC barcode to them and they would use it to complete the rebate for the camera. That should take another couple of weeks to process and issue the check.
So assuming that I actually get the checks in the next few weeks, I will say that other than losing my UPC cutout and sending one check to Washington, the Canon rebate system is not as horrible as suggested by the experiences of some. Both people I spoke to were very helpful, and to my own credit I am sure this had much to do with the fact that I followed this advice: you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Though I was ready to fight, I adopted a friendly attitude for both calls and was certainly rewarded for that.
The other lesson is to keep copies of EVERYTHING. I think this was the first time in my rebate adventures that I had scanned the actual UPC cutout. I always keep copies of the receipt and rebate forms with all the info I’ve entered. But in the past I’ve counted on the center to manage not losing the UPC code. I guess it was the warnings I’d heard about the Canon rebate program that made be extra meticulous.
So now my fingers are crossed that I’ll be getting two checks, which will go right into the back yard project…
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